


The Myth of the "Telepath Gene"

by pallasite



Series: Behind the Gloves [169]
Category: Babylon 5, Babylon 5 & Related Fandoms
Genre: Backstory, Canon Compliant, Essays, Fix-It, Gen, Genetics, Mention of Vorlons, Psi Corps, Worldbuilding, telepaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:20:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23799127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallasite/pseuds/pallasite
Summary: While Vorlons did have an influence on telepathy, it's not reallyquitethat simple.The prologue ofBehind the Glovesishere- please read!
Series: Behind the Gloves [169]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/677654
Comments: 4
Kudos: 1





	The Myth of the "Telepath Gene"

**Author's Note:**

> What is this series? Where are the acknowledgements, table of contents and universe timelines? See [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10184558/chapters/22620590).
> 
> I also have an [ask blog](https://behind-the-gloves.tumblr.com/), a [writing blog](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/pallasite-writes), and a "P3 life" Tumblr [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/p3-life) with funny anecdotes. :)

Now that I've already addressed [what P-ratings mean](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23608996/chapters/56655397), it's time to address another common misconception that honestly, I'm surprised I didn't think to cover until now.

Dark Genesis is a giant mess, any way you look at it, and its treatment of "the telepath gene" isn't any better. And then the show is the show, and explains nothing. So here we go again!

First, some background:

  * While there is a "genetic marker" for telepathy, only 70% of telepaths actually carry this marker.


  * Many - if not most - people who carry the "genetic marker" _are not telepaths_.



In Dark Genesis (as much of a mess as that book is), we see a "telepath panic" around 2115-2117, and mass testing, and lots of people being identified as "telepaths" who aren't. I covered this in [Stephen's story](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10324169/chapters/22823876): Stephen has the gene, but he's not a "telepath," and his life is wrecked because of it. In the same canon scenes, we see actress Anna Keck also discuss her positive test - and she, like Stephen, _isn't a telepath!_ At most, she's a latent, but honestly, from her description, it doesn't seem she's even that, but a normal (under later legal definitions) who is just good at reading emotions, all of which has nothing to do with being a "telepath." (Remember, what that means is largely political.)

They forced her onto sleepers anyway.

In genetics, we talk of genetic _penetrance_ \- the percent of people with a certain gene who express the trait (and it's often not 100%), and genetic _expressivity_ \- the degree to which (or way in which) a certain phenotype is expressed by someone carrying the gene.

We all learned about "dominant" and "recessive" genes in school, but the reality is much more complicated - people can have a gene and not have a trait, people with the same genes can have a trait to different degrees (or in different ways), and for many traits, there is more than one way someone can have the trait. (See, for example, the concept of _phenocopy_ \- or how an individual, through _environmental factors_ , can have a trait that is usually associated with having a particular genetic make-up.)

And of course, more commonly, genetics - and its interplay with environment - are so complicated, it's not often clear how, and to what degree, traits are genetic versus environmental (it's something complicated in between).

  * So you can't actually identify telepaths with a "genetic test," even though many thousands of people were murdered, or were aborted as fetuses, because they carried this gene. (It's more than 18,000 - canon says 18,000 were murdered _the first year_.)



After that early disaster, the MRA stopped using genetic tests to identify telepaths. Kevin Vacit is given one such test as a small child, but as soon as possible, everyone moved onto the only more reliable test - telepaths can almost always identify each other. (You just have to trust the testers, but that's another issue.) The genetic test was missing _thirty percent_ of telepaths, and catching many people who weren't telepaths at all. (It was also catching people who had other kinds of abilities that didn't translate into "commercializable telepathy" - like Constance in Dark Genesis (and Stephen's story)).

  * So what causes telepathy?



Uh... not one thing, actually.

If this was simple, the Corps wouldn't spend decades and bazillions of credits trying to figure out how to predict which couples are most likely to have children of equal or greater telepathic strength. They worked on that one for generations and never entirely figured it out - they just created better models to predict it.

It's not straightforward. Two normals (whether they have the "genetic marker" or not) can have a telepath child, which makes it look like a recessive trait, except it doesn't follow the percentages you'd expect (it's still far more rare than that), and two telepaths, even though it's almost unheard of for such a couple to have a child who is a normal, can nonetheless have a child who doesn't rate highly enough to be in the Corps.

In some ways, telepathy looks like a "line bred" trait in, for example, snakes (even though normals aren't typically inbreeding) - it can just show up in an individual in a population, out of nowhere. And many telepaths do come from such families. The EA government was so concerned about this, they made it law that _all children in the Earth Alliance have to be tested_ , and more than once.

  * But Vorlons!



Yeah... but.

What we basically have is Vorlons magnifying a human trait that _already existed_ \- as if they made people smarter or faster, or gave them quicker reflexes. So while yes, someone at P12 level has such abilities because their ancestors had contact with Vorlons - I can't see how that could ever occur otherwise - that doesn't mean telepathy _itself_ is an "alien trait" - the very basis for the murder of telepaths across Earth in the Telepath Panics of 2115 and 2156, the Telepath War, and so on. "There's some alien genetic manipulation - kill them!" "Centauri have telepaths, too - they're aliens! Kill them!" "Telepaths are like surplus nuclear weapons created by the Vorlons to fight the Shadows - they're too dangerous to let survive! Let's get them to kill each other!"

The very high-end telepaths have such a background in their distant ancestors, sure. Yet there are also other people - latents, P1s and P2s, surface-thought telepaths, and even on rare occasion some stronger folks - who don't have any such background. (Not that having such a background justifies violence... I shouldn't have to say this!)

Thirty percent of telepaths _don't have the genetic marker_. Telepathy wasn't "created" by Vorlons - they _magnified_ it.

(And having the genetic marker doesn't necessarily "make you stronger" - remember that a lot of normals have it, too.)

People always want associate what they don't understand with "aliens" somehow (or some psychological equivalent, like spirits). And that breeds fear, etc. etc. So "Vorlon influence" became the memorable point in normal society (as reflected in the books and in the show) - telepaths are "unnatural," as the products of alien genetic engineering - and this makes it easier to oppress and kill them. Crawford even uses exactly this reasoning to force one of his colleagues in the Senate to submit to his anti-telepath agenda.

(This is what normal bigots are doing when they say telepathy isn't "right." It's not "right" that they can do this or that, it's not "right" for telepaths to marry normals, it's not "right" for telepaths to marry each other... If telepathy isn't "right," then everything horrible they do to telepaths is just some attempt to make things "right.")

To complicate this picture even more, the Vorlons didn't influence people all at once. Canon gives a nonsensical story about all telepaths having "ancestors who visited Antarctica, and disappeared" - more of that Dark Genesis writing echoing _The Mountains of Madness_ and all that Lovecraftian stuff. There's just zero way that "all telepaths" (even all telepaths with the genetic marker) could have such a background, however. That story makes no sense. Yes, there are tourists who visit Antarctica... but this can't "explain telepaths" existing in every people on Earth.

Canon even contradicts itself later, saying "except in New Zealand... they've had telepaths for centuries!" Apparently Vorlons showed up many hundreds of years earlier, but only contacted the Maori?

I HAVE NO IDEA. THAT BOOK MAKES NO SENSE. Please don't ask me to make sense of that mess. It's not possible!

I can't fix the bad writing. No one in that world really knows what happened, either - so of course I can't tell you. I can just tell you what I have said - that whatever Vorlons did or didn't do, and whatever timeline they used to do it, what resulted isn't "simple." The Corps spent generations and enormous amounts of money trying to figure it out, but never entirely did. And telepaths don't exist "because Vorlons."


End file.
